Interactive service hub – User’s guide

The interactive service hub is designed to simplify your day-to-day job, and is specifically optimized for customer service. It shows you all your vital information in one place, and lets you focus on things that require your attention.

Important

This feature was introduced in CRM Online 2016 Update and CRM 2016 (on-premises).

Screen resolution. The interactive service hub requires at least a 1024 x 768 effective browser resolution. The effective browser resolution is determined by the screen resolution, browser zoom, and the operating system’s zoom percentage. If the browser is resized to a resolution lower than the minimum supported, you'll see a warning message that at lower resolutions, some content may not be visible.

Important

Here’s a list of things that the interactive service hub doesn’t support:

Clients. The interactive service hub is not supported on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for phones, and tablets and touch devices.

Right-to-left (RTL) languages: Hebrew and Arabic.

Accessibility options. The interactive service hub doesn’t support third-party accessibility aids, such as screen readers and other accessibility features.

If you’re using Internet Explorer, and you see a message asking for additional storage on your local computer, click Yes. If you click Not for this site, the interactive service hub application won’t load.

In the interactive service hub, you can work with record types that are enabled for the interactive experience. By default, the following record types, which you’ll most commonly use to manage your customer service, are enabled:

Accounts

Contacts

Cases

Activities: Email, Task, Appointment, Phone Call, Social Activity

Queue items

Dashboards

Social profiles

You can also see interactive dashboards in the interactive service hub.

Any record types that are enabled for mobile are also available for use in the interactive service hub. However, these records are read-only. For example, the entitlements are enabled for mobile, so you can see the entitlements data in the case form, but you can’t create or edit an entitlement in the interactive service hub.

Note

Your customizer can enable other custom entities and custom activities for the interactive experience.

The navigation bar for the interactive service hub is different than the navigation bar in the Dynamics 365 web application. Any changes to the representations of the other navigation bars aren’t reflected in the interactive service hub. For more details, contact your customizer.

The navigation bar in the interactive service hub doesn’t support the global Search box and the Settings menu.

Search for records in the interactive service hub from the following areas, depending on what you're looking for:

Global search or multi-entity search. Use global search to search for a keyword in multiple entities at the same time. Global search uses the quick find view for the various entities to search for records.

Search from a list of records (grid) or use single-entity search. To search for an entity record, go to the list of records for that entity. This search is also based on the quick find view of this entity.

Subgrids

Lookups

Searching the interactive service hub is based on the underlying quick find view. This view allows the customizer to specify the quick find columns that users are most likely to search. The system customizer must use the Dynamics 365 web application to configure the quick find view. More information: Configure Quick Find options for the organization

With December 2016 update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) and December 2016 Service Pack for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises), lists of records, subgrids, and lookup search are all based on the quick find view for the entity.

Note

When you edit a quick find view in the Dynamics 365 web application, it also applies to the interactive service hub.

You can also enable full-text search for your organization. Differences you may notice between full text and basic search include:

Full-text search not enabled:

Using Begins with—when you type a term in the Search box, results only include records that begin with that term. For example, if you want to search for “Alpine Ski House”, type alp in the Search box; if you type ski, the record will not be found.

Wildcard characters, for example *ski or *ski*, are allowed in the search term to find partial matches.

Full-text search

Using Search within—results include records that contain all of the words in the search term. The individual words can appear anywhere in the string and in any order. For example, if you search for “Alpine Ski House”, you could find results for “I left the house today to go skiing in the Alpine Meadows”, because all of the search words appear somewhere in the string.

When you’re in a record, use the Next Record and Previous Record buttons to see the next or previous records in the record set. A record set is the total number of records on a single page. For example, if you have 50 total records, by default, you’ll see 25 records on the first page, and 25 on the second page. When you open a record from the first page, you’ll be able to move between these 25 records by using the Next Record and Previous Records buttons.

Note

You can't navigate to the records of entities that are not enabled for interactive experience by using the Previous Record and Next Record buttons.

To go the previous page in the interactive service hub, click the Back button before the title of the record.

Note

Your browser’s Back button will take you to the previously visited website.

To create records quickly by filling in only the most basic information, on the nav bar, click the Quick Create button .

To find all of your records from multiple record types quickly, click the Search button . To filter results by one record type, click a record type from the filter drop-down list next to the Search box.

Note

You can only search for record types that are enabled for the interactive experience.

With December 2016 update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) and December 2016 Service Pack for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises), you can email links to records so your colleagues can quickly find these records by clicking the links. To email links to records, select one or more records in the list, and then on the command bar, click Email a link. The default email client opens with the links to these records. The recipients will see all content in the records for which they have permission.

In the interactive service hub, the case and knowledge article forms have a process bar (business process flow), which is collapsed by default. When you click a process stage, you'll see relevant steps for that stage. A flag on a stage indicates the stage you’re currently on. When you click an active stage, you can see the Next Stage button move to the next stage in the process.

If there is more than one process to use, you can switch between the processes by clicking More > Switch Process on the command bar, and then selecting the process you want to use.

Important

Certain fields, like Find Case or Similar Cases, aren’t available on the process bar of a case form in the interactive service hub.

When a business process flow that’s based on multiple entities is applied to a case or a knowledge article, the experience will be as follows:

The business process flow that's based on multiple entities won't be displayed on the form.

The Switch Process option will only show the business process flows that are based on a single entity.

If there are only multi-entity business process flows for an entity, the Switch Process option won't be available.

A tab is a group of sections on a page. Each Main form is composed of one or more tabs. By default, the Summary tab shows information about the customer, interactions with the customer, and other related records. You can click the different tabs to enter or see other miscellaneous details of a record.

Here’s an example of how the tabs appear on the case form.

This table lists the default tabs for each record type that’s enabled for the interactive experience.

Record type

Default tabs

Case

Summary. Includes the customer card, interaction timeline, and the Related section.

Details. Tracks additional details and social response details of the case.

Case Relationships. Shows a Merged Cases and Child Cases list. You can add a new child case to the current case from the Child Cases list. It also shows a list of knowledge articles associated with the case.

SLA. Shows the related SLA KPI Instance records that are created for each SLA KPI that is tracked for the case.

Account

Summary. Includes the customer card, interaction timeline, and the Related section.

See a combined view of your customer’s interactions across various channels, such as phone, email, or even social activities in the timeline. It also shows any related notes or system posts.

The timeline is available on the Summary tab of account, contact, and case records. For knowledge articles, the timeline appears on the Content tab.

Here are a few things you can do in the timeline:

Filter the timeline for a specific activity type or find an activity by searching for a specific keyword.

Search and filter work in combination or in isolation. For example, you can first filter the activities to just show emails, and then use the Search option to search for email messages with a specific keyword.

Refresh the timeline so you can see the updated list of activities.

Click the title of an activity to open the activity record.

Take quick actions on an activity from the timeline, such as marking an activity complete, assigning it to others, adding it to a queue, converting it to a case, or deleting it. All actions that are available on a form command bar for any given record type are available here.

In the Related section (also called a reference panel), use the vertical tabs to see related records for the current record or search for knowledge articles. This section is enabled by default for account, contact, case, and knowledge article records. Your customizer can add this section for custom entities that are enabled for the interactive experience.

By default, the first tab in the Related section of a case record shows the recent cases and entitlements for the current case record you’re working on. When you open a record from the list, it appears in a horizontal tab in the Related section.

Note

If you see data for any record type that isn’t enabled for interactive experience, you won’t be able to open or edit the record from the list. This is also the case for fields of type lookup, for example the entitlement field on the case form.

Note

For account and contact records, the Related section shows recent opportunities, recent cases, and active entitlements. For knowledge articles, this section shows related versions, related translations, related articles, and related products. Your system administrator or customizer can choose what related data to show in this section for each form.

The second tab in the Related section is the Knowledge Articles Search tab. This tab gives knowledge article suggestions based on the title of the record, and also lets you search for a knowledge article containing specific keywords. When you open a record from the list, it appears in a horizontal tab in the Related section.

Creating and managing a case can’t be any simpler. With the intuitive case form in the interactive service hub, you can do all your important tasks and actions without navigating to different parts of the application.

You can capture important information about customers, interactions you’ve had with them, and all related records of the current case in once single place.

Make sure that you have the Customer Service Manager or Customer Service Representative role, or equivalent permissions.

In the interactive service hub, go to Service > Cases.

On the command bar, click New.

In the Case Title field, type a subject or descriptive name to identify the case.

Find the customer:

Click the Identify area of the process bar.

Click the Find Customer lookup button. By default, this field shows both account and contact records. Or, type a few letters and press Enter to search for records that contain the letters. After you select an existing customer and save the record, the Customer Details section (blue tile) will show the contact details, along with recent cases and activities for the customer in the Related and Timeline section.

If a customer record doesn’t exist, click New in the inline lookup results to create a new record.

Click the Find Contact lookup button, and then select an existing contact for the case or click New in the inline lookup results to create a new contact record.

In the Subject field, select a subject. Associating cases with subjects helps you search for cases with similar issues and find related articles. If you don't see the subject you want in the list, ask your system administrator to add it.

In the Origin field, select the channel through which this case was initiated.

In the Product field, select the product this case is about. You can’t add a product family, a draft product, or a draft product bundle.

To see what kind of support you should provide the customer, click the Entitlements lookup button and select an active entitlement. The list shows all entitlements in Dynamics 365 regardless of the customer you’ve selected for the case. To see only those entitlements that are associated with the customer of the case, ask your system administrator or customizer to enable related records filtering for lookup fields.

Note

If you’re on CRM Online 2015 Update 1, and your manager has set default entitlements for a customer in Dynamics 365, when a case is created or when a case is updated and the customer, contact, or product field has changed, a default entitlement is automatically associated with the case.

When a case is created and an entitlement is applied to it (or when the case gets resolved), the entitlement terms from the associated entitlement are decremented. However, if you don’t want the entitlement terms to be decremented for a case, on the command bar click Do not decrement entitlement terms.

Click on the other tabs to enter or see additional information about the case.

The Details tab tracks additional details and social response details of the case.

The Case Relationships tab shows a Merged Cases and Child Cases list. You can add an existing child case to the current case from the Child Cases list. If you want to create a new child case for the current case, on the command bar, click Create Child Case.

The Case Relationships tab also shows a list of knowledge articles associated with the case.

The SLA tab shows the related SLA KPI instance records for each SLA KPI that’s tracked for the case.

Note

By default, a timer for enhanced SLA is already added to your case form. If an enhanced SLA applies to the case you're working on, you will see a timer that shows the countdown to meet the SLA KPIs.

If required, talk to your system administrator to have a timer added for a standard SLA to the case form.

When an enhanced SLA is applied to a case, a related SLA KPI Instance record is created for each SLA KPI that is tracked for that case. On the
Summary tab of the case record, you’ll see a timer that shows the time remaining to meet each SLA KPI.

When a service rep puts a case on hold, the status of the SLA KPI Instance is set to Paused. You can see the time for which a case was on hold and the last time the case was put on hold. These details are not available on the case form by default, but your system customizer can add these fields on the case form for you. The on hold time is the time for which the case was set to a status that you defined as an On-Hold status in the System settings dialog box.
More information: System Settings dialog box - Service tab

When the service rep resumes a case, the status of the SLA KPI Instance record is updated. The following details are updated in the record if the SLA isn’t violated:

Failure time

Warning time

Total time the case is on hold

If the service rep puts the case on hold after the warning time, then the warning time isn’t updated when the case is resumed.

Capture all interactions and communications you’ve had with your customer by adding them as activities in the Timeline section. The timeline section gives you a unified view of everything that's happening on a case, like email received, a follow-up task that you created, system posts that are automatically generated when the cases is created, or any notes you take while talking to the customer.

When you update an activity, it moves up in the Timeline because Timeline is sorted from latest to the oldest. This is the default and only order of sorting.

To

Do this

Create a new activity

In the Timeline section, click +, and then select an activity type: Email, Task, Note, Appointment, or Phone Call.

In the Search for Records box, type the word that you want to look for in the title and content of the activities.

Filter activities

In the Timeline section, click the Show Filters button .

Click Till Date to filter the activities based on date filters. The available date filters are: To Date, Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month, Month Till Date, This Quarter, Last Quarter, and Custom Time Frame.

Click All Items to filter activities based on the activity type.

Take actions on an activity

In the Timeline section, click the Quick Actions button

Select the action you want to take.

The list of quick actions you’ll see for any activity is the same as the ones that are available for the activity at a form level (on the command bar). For example, for an email activity, you will see actions like Reply, Reply All, or Forward. Custom actions may also be available.

The Knowledge Base Search tab lets you search for relevant knowledge articles to resolve a case. Click the Knowledge Base Search tab to see search results automatically populated based on a field your administrator configured in the Knowledge Base Search control properties. For a case, this is the title of the case record.

Important

The knowledge base search in the interactive service hub shows relevant knowledge articles only when your organization is set up to use the native Dynamics 365 knowledge management capability. For more information, talk to your administrator.

Type a different keyword to search for other knowledge articles. The following fields of a knowledge article are searched for the keywords that you type: Title, Content, Keywords, Description, and Article Public Number.

To see knowledge articles in specific states, use the filters. You can filter search results to see all draft, published, or approved articles.

If you have knowledge articles in multiple languages, you can also filter the search results to see knowledge articles available in specific language only. To filter knowledge articles based on a language, use the language filter.

The language filter is available only when your system customizer has enabled it while setting up the Knowledge Base Search control.

By default, the search results will be filtered based on the default language that the customizer has selected.

If the customizer selects User's Default Language while configuring the Search control, the search results will be filtered based on the signed in user's default language.

If the default language selected by the customizer is not an active language, the signed in user's default language is used.

If the user's default language is not an active language, the first active language available alphabetically is used as a default filter.

To choose how you want to sort your search results, click Relevance. You can sort the knowledge articles on relevance, number of views, newest first, or oldest first.

Click the article title to see its full content. The article opens as a horizontal tab in the Related section.

To associate the knowledge article to the current case, click the

Link the KB Article button .

You can also dissociate the article from the case by choosing the Unlink the knowledge article from the current record button .

To send an email with a link to the knowledge article on a portal in an email, click the Quick Actions button , and then click Email Link. An email form opens with the link to the article populated in the email body. The fields are automatically populated based on the case and customer details. Add other information as needed, and then on the command bar, click Send. If your administrator hasn’t selected the Use an external portal check box in the Embedded Knowledge Search setup, this option isn't available.

If the article is published, an external link is copied to the email body.

Note

This action is available only for Published and Expired articles.

To copy the external URL of the article so you can share it with your customers over channels like chat or email, click the Copy Link button .

Note

This option is available only if your organization is using an external portal to publish the knowledge articles and your administrator has selected the Use an external portal check box in the Embedded Knowledge Search setup. If you use a browser other than Internet Explorer, this option isn’t available.

To send an email with the content of the knowledge article, click the Quick Actions button , and then click Link Article and Email Content. An email form opens with the content of the article populated in the email body. The fields are automatically populated based on the case and customer details.

There are times when existing knowledge articles do not contain relevant information for resolving a case. You, as a CSR, can now contribute to the knowledge base by turning all information that has been researched for a case into a knowledge article. You can convert one case into multiple knowledge articles.

Make sure you have Create permissions on the Knowledge Article entity.

In the list of active cases, open the one that has the information that you want to convert to a knowledge article.

On the command bar, click ...More > Convert To > To Knowledge Article.

The Convert to Knowledge Article dialog box opens. The title, owner, and subject of the article are populated based on the title, owner, and subject of the case. The content of the article is automatically populated with the description of the case. If the case is resolved, the content field shows the case description, case resolution, and case resolution description.

If you want to open the newly-created article, click the Open the new knowledge article field to set it to Yes, and then click Convert. Otherwise, set it to No.

If you set Open the new knowledge article to Yes, a knowledge article form opens. Fill in the necessary information for the knowledge article, and then click the Save button.

When a customer opens multiple cases about the same issue (through different support channels), or when multiple customers from the same account call in about the same issue, you can merge those cases into one case to eliminate redundancy.

Important

For the interactive service hub, this feature was introduced in Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1 and in CRM 2016 SP1 (on-premises).

When a case is merged, the state of the case is changed to canceled, and the status is changed to merged. This is because it is merged into another case and all of the open case activities, emails, and attachments are now associated with the case it was merged into. By default you can merge up to 10 cases at a time.

A few things to remember when you merge cases with parent and child relationships:

When you merge a case that has child cases, those child cases become child cases of the parent case they were merged into.

You can only merge a child case into another child case if both of the child cases have the same parent case.

You can manage multiple cases more efficiently if you use parent and child cases in the interactive service hub. When you want to track a case where work needs to be done by other departments,, or when you need to track the same issue for multiple customers, open a primary, or "parent" case, and then create secondary, "child" cases.
For example, if you get a service request to install new electrical and gas connections, this requires work to be done separately by the gas and electric departments. In this situation, you can open two child cases, one for the gas department and the other for the electric department. The original case is marked as the parent case. Once the child cases are resolved, you can then close the parent case.

Note

This feature was introduced in December 2016 update for Dynamics 365 (online) and in December 2016 Service Pack for Dynamics 365 (on-premises).

Sometimes, resolving a case action might be blocked based on your current case status. This is because your admin may have set things up so that you only see a limited set of statuses to choose from based on the current status of a case. For more information about the available list of case statuses, contact your administrator.

Depending on your settings, a case with a parent and child relationship can be closed in one of the following ways:

When all the child cases are resolved, you can then close the parent case.

When you resolve the parent case, it will then resolve all the active associated child cases.

A parent and child case can be closed independently of each other. This is the default setting.

Important

Before you resolve a parent case with active child cases, make sure that all the case activities are closed. Otherwise, you’ll get a warning stating that you need to manually close the open activities or the system will automatically cancel the open activities when the case is resolved. Also, performance may be slow when you close a parent case with lots of active child case associated with it.

Make sure you close all the case activities. If there are open activities associated with the case, you’ll see a message saying that the open activities will be canceled if you resolve this case. To continue, click Confirm.

In the Resolve Case dialog box, in the Resolution Type list, select how the case was resolved.

In the Resolution box, type a short explanation of the resolution.

The total time spent on all activities for this case, as recorded in the Duration box in each activity, is filled out automatically in the Total Time box.

In the Billable Time list, enter the amount of time spent on the case to be billed to the customer.

If this case is linked to an entitlement, the billable time will be subtracted from the allotted minutes for that entitlement.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1, your system administrator can now enable entities other than case for SLA. For the interactive service hub, the following other entities can be enabled for SLA:

With this enhancement, you can define metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) to meet the service level for these entity records.

Note

SLAs can only be created in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 web application. However, you can ask your system administrator or customizer to add a timer to your interactive experience forms to track the SLA KPI details in the interactive service hub.

With the new Dynamics 365 knowledge management solution, you can create and manage knowledge articles that your users may be looking for. Knowledge articles can include instructions about using your products or answers to questions customers frequently have. Use the rich text editor to format your content or embed videos and images.

Important

The ability to create and format knowledge articles with the rich text editor is available only in the interactive service hub. The articles that are created in the interactive service hub will be available in the Dynamics 365 web application as read-only records.

Turn your customer questions, issues, and feedback into knowledge articles, so other service reps can benefit from them. Add images and videos to your articles to explain things better and make the articles engaging.

Make sure that you have Create and Read permissions on the Knowledge Article entity. By default, these permissions are added to the Knowledge Manager, Customer Service Manager, or Customer Service Representative role.

In the interactive service hub, go to Service > Knowledge Articles.

On the command bar, click New.

You’ll be on the Content tab of the knowledge article.

In the Article Content section, fill in the following details:

Title. Type a descriptive title that communicates the subject and purpose of the article in a concise manner.

Keywords. Type keywords for the article. These keywords are used for searching the knowledge base for articles. Separate keywords with commas.

Description. Type a short overview of the article. This appears in the search results and is used for search engine optimization.

Create rich and well-formatted content for email or knowledge articles using the new rich text editor in the interactive service hub. The editor brings common word processor features like advanced styling, linking, find and replace, and insert images and tables.

You can choose a specific format or style for the content you’re writing.

Command

Use

1. Formatting Styles

Apply predefined sets of formatting features to make it easier to keep the presentation of the text consistent. To make the choice easier, the style names are displayed in a style that they represent, giving you a preview of what the text will look like.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

2. Paragraph Format

Apply predefined block-level combinations of various formatting options. A paragraph format can only be applied to a block-level element, like a paragraph or a div element.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

3. Font Name

Choose a font for the selected text.

4. Font size

Choose a font size for the selected text.

5. Bold

Apply bold formatting to the selected text.

6. Italic

Apply italic formatting to the selected text.

7. Underline

Underline the selected text.

8. Strikethrough

Mark selected text for deletion.

9. Text Color

Choose a text color for the selected text.

10. Background Color

Choose a background color for the selected text.

11. Align Left

Left align the text. When you align your text left, the paragraph is aligned with the left margin and the text is ragged on the right side.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

12. Center

Center align the text. When you center align the text, the paragraph is aligned symmetrically along the vertical axis and the text is ragged on the both sides.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

13. Align Right

Right align the text. When you align your text right, the paragraph is aligned with the right margin and the text is ragged on the left side.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

14. Insert/Remove Numbered List

Create a numbered list.

15. Insert/Remove Bulleted List

Create a bulleted list.

16. Increase Indent

Increase the margin on the left side of text.

17. Decrease Indent

Decrease the margin on the left side of the text.

18. Paste as Plain Text

Paste the clipboard data as plain text, without the source formatting and styling.

19. Paste From Word

Paste content from Microsoft Office Word with the original content formatting. This will retain:

Spacing and line breaks

Ordered and unordered lists

Tables

Font styles and colors

Note

Images won’t be copied from Word

Microsoft Office Word.

20. Insert Table

Insert a table, and specify the table properties.

21. Image

Insert an image.

Choose Insert Image.

In the Image Info tab, specify the web address of the image, and also specify properties to define how the image will appear in the email or article.

Note

If the image is located on the external server, use the full absolute path. If the image is located on a local server, you can use a relative path.

If you want the image to be a clickable link, in the Link tab, add a URL for the image. You can also specify if you want the targeted page to open in a new window, topmost window, same window, or parent window.

To configure additional image options, use the Advanced tab. This is meant for advanced users with knowledge of HTML and CSS, and lets you change the presentation of the image.

ID. Type a unique identifier for an image element in the document (id attribute).

Language Direction. Choose the direction of the text.

Language Code. Type the language of the image element specified.

Long Description URL. Type the web address of an HTML page containing a longer description of the image.

Stylesheet Classes. Enter the class of the image element (class attribute). Note that an image element might be assigned more than one class. If this is the case, separate class names with spaces.

Advisory Title. Enter the text of the tooltip that is shown when the mouse cursor hovers over the image.

Style. Enter the CSS style definitions. Note that each value must end with a semicolon and individual properties should be separated with spaces.

22. Link

Add clickable hyperlinks or email addresses to your documents. In the Link dialog box choose the type of link you’d like to insert.

The Link Info tab allows you to choose the link type as well as set the link protocol and URL.

The Target tab is only available for the URL link type. It specifies the location where the link will open after you click it.

23. Unlink

When you place the cursor on a link, the Unlink button on the toolbar becomes active. Click the button to remove the link and make it plain text.

24. Anchor

You can add anchors in document text. After you add anchors, you can link to these anchors for easier navigation.

To add an anchor:

Place the cursor where you want to insert an anchor, and then on the toolbar, click the Anchor button.

The Anchor Properties dialog box opens.

Ente a name for the anchor, and then click OK.

The Anchor button appears in the area where you created the anchor.

You can now use the Link button to link to your anchor.

25. Embed Media

To embed videos into your content:

Place the cursor where you want to insert the video, and then on the toolbar, click the Embed Media button.

The Embed Video dialog box opens.

Enter the embed link of the video provided by the video hosting provider, and then click OK.

26. Create Div Container

Create a div container to apply formatting to a larger document fragment that extends beyond one block.

The General tab lets you manually add a stylesheet class that is applied to the div element.

The Advanced tab lets you configure additional div element options such as assigning it an ID, a language code, a text direction, an advisory title, or CSS style properties.

Note

This option is available in the expanded mode only.

27. Source

Open the HTML source code for the content.

To embed videos and IFrames, video and iframe tags can be used in HTML source code mode.

Important

You can’t use client-side code (script tags or JavaScript) in articles and emails. If you want to associate CSS or JavaScript, use web resources.

To make sure the content you’ve created is accurate, have someone review it.

You can mark an article for review or directly assign it to a specific person or queue. When you mark an article for review, it starts appearing in the knowledge manager’s dashboard. The knowledge manager can then assign the article to specific team members or a queue for review.

In the article you want to mark for review, in the Status Reason drop-down list, click Needs Review.

On the process bar, click Author.

In the Mark for Review field, click Mark Complete.

To assign the knowledge article to another reviewer or team, on the command bar, click Assign and select the user or a team.

To add the article to a queue so reviewers can pick it from there, on the command bar, click More > Add to Queue, and then select the queue.

It’s important to review articles for accuracy before they’re published or made available to others.

Important

To approve a knowledge article, you must have Approve permissions for the knowledge article record type. This permission is added by default to the Knowledge Manager, Customer Service Manager, Customer Service Representative, or System Administrator role or equivalent permissions.

To

Do this

Pick an article assigned to you

Go to Service > My Knowledge Dashboard, and then see the My Active Articles stream.

-OR-

In the interactive service hub, go to Service > Queue Items, and then select the Items available to work on view.

To suggest review feedback

On the process bar, in the Review stage, in the Review field, select Reject.

In the Timeline section, click +, and then click Note to add details about the changes you want in the knowledge article.

The article is automatically assigned to the primary author of the knowledge article.

Approve the content of the article

When you approve the content of an article, it means that the content is ready to be consumed by other customer service reps, and also ready to be published.

On the process bar, in the Review stage, in the Review field, select Approve.

Article versioning helps you manage updates to your knowledge articles. By creating major and minor versions of a knowledge article, you can keep your articles up to date with the latest information while keeping track of changes throughout the lifecycle of your products and services.

This capability helps you to keep accurate records of the features your organization provides and go back to previous versions if you need to.

In the interactive service hub, click Services and choose Knowledge Articles.

Open the article you want to create a new version for.

In the knowledge article, click Create Major Version or Create Minor Version.

An example of a major version would be when your documentation changes to detail a new feature or functionality, while a minor version might be a change to the user interface with no change to functionality.

The new version of your article will contain all of the same content, information, and permissions as the current version. The Version Major or Version Minor field will automatically update to reflect the new version number.

Note

You won’t able to make any changes to the Major Version Number, Minor Version Number, Language, or Article Public Number fields when creating a new major or minor version of an article.

After you have reviewed the article, make any changes that you want to the new version. You can update the article title, content, keywords, and description to reflect any changes to your products, features, or services.

When you are done making changes, you can push the new version of your article through your standard article workflow. When you are finished reviewing and are ready to publish, on the command bar, click More > Publish, and then choose how and when you want to publish your new version. You can publish your new version immediately, schedule it to publish at a future date, or leave it as a draft to manually publish later. More information: Schedule or publish an article

Managing your article versions means publishing and archiving different versions of each article to provide the most accurate information to your customers and internal employees. Keep in mind that only one version of an article can be published at a time; it’s important to keep track of the changes that are made to each version and publish them when it is appropriate.

In the knowledge article, click the Summary tab.

In the Related Information section, click the Related Versions button to display a list of all major and minor versions of the article.

In the Related versions list, open the version you want to delete.

Click the More button, and then click Send to Trash.

When prompted, click OK.

Deleting an article version is permanent and can’t be undone. You won’t be able to go back to that version of the article, so make sure that you don’t need any of the information. It’s a good idea to create a local backup of any versions you delete.

Your knowledge content needs to reach all of your customers, no matter what market or region they are from. The knowledge management capability in Dynamics 365 helps you translate your articles so that you can provide the same self-help content in multiple languages without having to manage multiple copies of the same article. By using the translation feature, you can quickly and efficiently provide 24-hour service to all of your customers.

Open the article you want to translate, and on the command bar, click Translate.

In the Create new translation dialog box, in the Pick a language drop-down list, choose the language you want.

In the Create new version field, choose whether to create a new major or minor version for your translation.

You can translate articles into any language that’s supported by the interactive service hub.

Click Create.

Enter your translated text in the appropriate fields. You can enter translated text for the following fields:

Title

Keywords

Article Description

Content

When you are finished reviewing and are ready to publish, click More > Publish. Choose how and when you want to publish your new version. You can publish your new version immediately, schedule it to publish at a future date, or leave it as a draft to manually publish later. More information: Schedule or publish an article

After you have published a translation for an article, you can manage it and any other translations by clicking the Summary tab of the knowledge article.

In the Related Information section, click Related Translations.

Open the translation you want to view. Keep in mind that there may be multiple versions for each language. You can sort the translations by clicking the column headers of the Related Translations section.

After the content in the article is complete and reviewed, you can publish the article to the portal to make it available to your customers.

Important

If your organization is using a portal for publishing the knowledge articles, your customizer can write a plug-in that can pick the published articles and post on your portal, and also capture the article views back.

Make sure that you have the Publish and Update permission on the Knowledge Article record type. These permissions are added by default to the Knowledge Manager, Customer Service Manager, Customer Service Representative, or System Administrator role.

In the interactive service hub, go to Service > Knowledge Articles.

Open a knowledge article that’s in the Approved state.

To make it easy to find knowledge articles related to specific products, associate the knowledge article with a product.

On the command bar, click More > Relate Product.

In the Select Product to Associate with field, click the Lookup button, elect a product this article is about, and then, click Associate.

The associated article appears in the Related Products list in the Related Information section of the Summary tab.

On the process bar, click the Publish stage.

In the Set Product Associations field, click Mark as Complete.

If you want to schedule the article to publish on a later date, on the Summary tab, in the Publish On field, select a date and time to publish the article.

On the command bar, click More > Publish.

In the Publish field, select whether you want to publish the knowledge article right away or in the future. To publish the article in the future, in the Publishing Date Time field, select a date and time.

In the Published Status field, select what status the article should be in after it is published. By default, Published is selected.

In the Expiration Date field, select a date and time when you want the published article to expire. Expired articles are no longer available in searches.

If you’ve set an expiration date, in the Expiration Status field, select the status the knowledge article should be set to after it expires.

To publish all approved related translated articles with the article, in the Publish Approved related translations with Article, click Yes.

Tracking your content helps you and your authoring team assess its value to your organization and your customers. Knowing and understanding when, where, and how many times an article was viewed tells you how much your customers and team members rely on the information that it contains. This data is extremely useful when creating future content curation plans and can help you decide what content you will deliver in the future, as well as how you deliver it, where you deploy it, and what style or structure you use to write it.

To view an article’s view counts and other statistics, open the article you want to track, and then click the Analytics tab.

Views section. Shows you the total number of times that this article has been viewed. This figure represents the total views of all versions and all translations of this article combined. It also shows individual article views on specific days. You can click the column headers to sort by chronological order or by the number of views.

Cases section. Shows a list of the cases that have used this article. Double-click a case to view its details.

By reviewing cases that have used your articles, you can gain valuable insights into the questions that customers are asking, as well as what avenues they tried before asking for help. This data can help you expose your knowledge articles better and provide more useful information to your customers and team members.

To assess the usefulness of a knowledge article, and to maintain up-to-date and accurate knowledge articles, it is important that you capture all the feedback and ratings on the knowledge articles and update the articles accordingly. If your articles are published on a portal, customers and users can provide their feedback and also give ratings on an article.

To view an article’s feedback and rating, open the article you want to track, and then click the Analytics tab.

The Feedback subgrid shows all feedback received for the current knowledge article.

The Rating field calculates the average rating of the article based on the amount of feedback and number of ratings received.

Add feedback to an article

Title. Type a descriptive title for the feedback. For example, if the feedback is about customer satisfaction, type that.

Source. Select whether the feedback is internal or from a portal. If you received the feedback over a phone call, you can select Internal.

Comments. Type any feedback comments that you want.

Rating. Type a number to specify how useful the related record is. For example, if you are tracking the customer satisfaction for a case, and you want to rate it a 2 on a scale of 1 - 10, type 2.

Minimum Rating Value and Maximum Rating Value. Specify a minimum and maximum rating to define a rating scale. For example, you want to give a rating of 2 on the scale of 1 - 10, type 1 as the minimum rating and 10 as the maximum rating.

Created by (Contact). If you're creating the feedback on behalf of a customer contact, select the contact here.

The Created By and Closed By fields are automatically populated with the user who creates or deactivates the feedback record.

This dashboard is designed for authors to give them a visual snapshot of the number of knowledge articles they’re working on and their status. It helps them quickly know things like article expiring in the month and articles in review.

Streams show data from views or queues. In the knowledge dashboard, the stream shows the active articles assigned to the author.

Charts provide a count of relevant records in the streams, such as articles by status reason, articles by owner, or articles by subject. They also act as visual filters. You can drill down in a chart to see data that interests you the most.

Tiles give authors an aggregated view of data in the streams and help them monitor the volume of their knowledge articles.

This dashboard is designed specifically for knowledge managers. As a knowledge manager, you can quickly know the most popular articles, articles that need review, highest-rated articles, or articles that are about to expire, and take necessary actions on the articles right from here.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 interactive experience dashboards are a one-stop workplace where you review your workload and take actions. The information in the interactive dashboard is shown in real time, coming from various views and queues. The interactive dashboards with their modern and intuitive interface are optimized for the customer service experience. For example, instead of paging through the application looking for a particular case, you’ll be able to open and update the case right from the dashboard. This will save you time, help to focus on tasks at hand, and get more work done. You’ll need sufficient permissions to use the interactive dashboards. The permissions will be assigned to you by an administrator.

The interactive dashboards come in two flavors: multi-stream and single-stream.

When you sign in to the interactive service hub, you’re looking at the Tier 1 multi-stream default dashboard. A multi-stream dashboard displays data in real time over multiple data streams. The data in a stream is based on an entity’s view or a queue, such as My Activities, My Cases, or Cases in the Banking Queue. While a stream always contains information only about one entity, each stream on the dashboard may contain information about a different entity. For example, you may be tracking cases in one stream and accounts in the other stream, but, you can’t track cases and accounts in the same stream. In a multi-stream dashboard all streams may be displaying data based on the same entity.

You also could be using a multi-stream entity-specific dashboard, such as the Cases dashboard. To open a dashboard like this, you’ll need to navigate to Service and down to a specific entity, such as Cases, as shown here.

The default Cases grid is displayed. To open the Cases dashboard, click the square button in the bottom left corner of the page, as shown here.

Multi-stream dashboards target Tier 1 support, where customer service representatives handle many support cases at the same time. An entity-specific dashboard can be useful for Tier 1 representatives or Tier 2 customer representatives that look at fewer, but, more complex cases. In the multi-stream dashboard, you can easily switch from a standard view to the tile view. The interactive tiles show an aggregated view of the data across the queues or views. You can also click the tile to drill down to the underlying records. The interactive dashboard application opens with the Tier 1 interactive dashboard. However, you can make another selection from the available dashboards, as shown here.

Single-stream dashboards display real-time data over one stream based on a view or queue. The tiles are positioned on the right side of the dashboards and are always shown. Single-stream dashboards are helpful to Tier 2 leads or managers, who monitor fewer, but more complex or escalated cases in a single view or queue.

Multi-stream and single-stream dashboards contain interactive charts that give you a count of relevant records, such as cases by priority or by status. These charts also act as visual filters.

You can apply additional filtering with global filters and timeframe filters. The global filter works on streams and charts in the dashboard. You can sort the data in a stream based on different criteria, such as the priority, status, or the date when the record was created.

The illustrations here show multi-stream and single-stream dashboards with the header pane. Below the header you see visual filters and streams. In the single-stream dashboard, you also see tiles. The dashboard header shown here contains the following controls and clickable buttons, from left to right: dashboard selector, refresh, visual filter (interactive chart) button, global filter button, and timeframe filter.

Interactive tiles provide an aggregated view of the information in the streams, across queues or views that interest you most. They help you monitor the volume of cases and quickly drill down to a particular case. In the multi-stream dashboard, you can switch from the standard view to the tile view using the switcher, a control at the bottom right corner of the dashboard, as shown here. In the single-stream dashboard, the tiles are always shown and there is no switcher on the dashboard.

If you have five streams in the multi-stream dashboard in the standard view, after you switch to tiles, you’ll see five tiles. If a view that tracks your active cases contains 30 items, the corresponding My Active Cases tile will display a numerical number 30 in the center of the tile. To drill down to a particular case, click the tile anywhere or More (…) in the right bottom corner. A flyout window will open. If there are too many cases to show, the window will have a scrollbar. You can navigate and click a particular case in the list, which will take you straight to the case form. The illustration shows the tiles and underlined cases in the list.

Interactive charts provide a visual snapshot of key metrics, such as cases by priority or by origin. They also act as visual filters (interactive charts) to help remove clutter from the screen and display information that interests you most. For example, if you click the High Priority circle in the “Cases by Priority” chart, the dashboard will refresh and you’ll see only high priority cases in your data streams. You can find different types of charts on your dashboard, such as pie, bar, doughnut, or tag chart. Visual filters (interactive charts) and tiles help you see the changes and patterns in data, and act quickly to address the most important issues. To display the charts on the dashboard, click the visual filter (interactive chart) button in the dashboard header, as shown here. The clickable button acts as a toggle switch, to show or hide the visual filters (interactive charts) on the dashboard. On the single-stream dashboard, the visual filters (interactive charts) are always shown and can’t be hidden from the view.

The following illustration shows the multi-stream dashboard without visual filters

To add granularity to filtering data, you can use the global filter. For example, you can apply the global filter to show only escalated cases and the cases that are marked as “Request.”

The global filter button is shown in the dashboard header to the right of the chart button, as shown here.

When you click the global filter button, the filter flyout window opens. The entity fields that are preconfigured by your administrator appear in alphabetical order in the flyout window. You can select multiple values in a field, as well as values from multiple fields. In our example, we checked Yes for the IsEscalated field and checked the cases of type Request. Click Apply for the action to take place.

After you apply global filters, the dashboard refreshes to show you only the escalated and requested cases in charts, streams, and tiles that are based on the filter entity (the filter entity is the entity that is used in the charts). By applying the visual filter for critical cases and the global filter for escalated cases, with just a few clicks, you went from a long list of cases to only a few cases that really matter to you.

Filtering helps remove the clutter on the screen and show only the work items that you want to focus on. However, if you want to see the entire unfiltered workload, it takes only a click of the mouse to clear a particular filter or all filters at once. The applied filters are conveniently shown in the dashboard header and you can clear the filters by clicking the Clear button next to each filter or clear all filters by clicking the Clear button next to the global filter button as shown here.

You can also apply the timeframe to display cases in a specified period of time. The available timeframe filters are: To Date, Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month, Month Till Date, This Quarter, Last Quarter, and Custom Time Frame. For example, you can choose to view cases from last month, last week, or today.

You can select the check box in the top right corner of the work item to open the quick actions menu. From this menu, you can directly resolve or cancel a case, or assign the case to someone else, as shown here.

To see more menu items you can use the More (…) button on the quick actions menu, or toggle the check box. The illustration shows the Assign menu selection.

You can edit the stream properties by clicking More (…) in the stream header, as shown here.

For example, you can choose to sort the cases by priority, instead of the date the case was created or modified. When you click Edit Properties, the flyout dialog opens, in which you can make a new selection, such as sort by Priority, as shown here. After you change the sort criteria, the dashboard refreshes and you see the cases sorted by the priority in the stream.

Note

By default, sorting is initially based on the Modified On field. If you change the default sorting from Modified On to something else, and the Modified On selection isn’t in the Sort By list in the flyout, you won’t be able to go back to sorting by that field again.

You can easily toggle the sort order in the stream by clicking the field name on which the data sorted, such as Priority or Modified On. You can sort the data to see high priority cases first, as shown here.

The information in the charts and streams is color coded for the fields that contain a set of options. For example, a case type can be “Question,” “Problem,” or Request.” Or, a case can be escalated (“Yes”), or not escalated (“No”). Each of these options can be assigned a specific color. For example, cases that are questions can be shown in yellow, cases that are requests in purple, and problem cases can be shown in red. In the streams, the color is shown in the thin vertical line to the left of the work item description. The doughnut charts and tag charts don’t show information in color. They depict information in white, gray, and black shades. You can work with your administrator to choose the colors you like for your dashboard data.